Tag: Massage

Interesting facts about your feet.

Almost 8,000 nerves in your feet26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles and tendonsThe average person will walk around 115,000 miles in a lifetime, that’s more than 4 times around the Earth!

Welcome this is Healthy Steps and I am Brian Hagan. Today our video will be on the self care of the feet.Our focus will be on increasing range of motion and loosen and stretching the muscles of the feet.If you have any concerns about whether this would be safe for your feet talk with your doctor first. Okay! Lets get working on your feet.

1. Warm the feet up by gentle rolling on a golf ball, an old rolling pin, or muscle roller like I have here. Our goal is to just warm up the muscle. Roll out the feet until they start to feel warmed up.

Once your foot feels warm start getting a little deeper using golf ball or a tool designed to work deep into the muscle. For me I'm going to switch to a deep muscle tool. You can do just as deep with a golf ball. Remember to work slowly especially if your feet are tight and tender. Remember you want to be able to walk after your done.

As you work into your foot. Look for those area that are very tender and spend some time here. Again be gentle. No bruising! After you have work the foot well. You'll want to stretch the musclesPull the toes gently toward you and hold. Release and repeat. Hold for the count of 8.Push the toes gentle away from you. Putting them in flexion and hold. Release and repeat. Hold for the count of 8.Rotate the foot gently toward the outside of the foot. Then rotate the foot gently toward the inside of the foot. Repeat 3 to 4 times. Gently move your foot and toes in all directions. Basically just get some movement in the foot.Now position yourself into a kneeling position and lean back on my feet. again getting a good stretch in the foot.Finally, you want to stand up so that you can do some foot raises. you did a good job loosening your feet now its time to add some strength to them. You want to work up to doing 30 foot raise, but start slow with 5 and work your way up to 30.

That's it. Self care for the feet. I hope this was helpful. We love feedback and comments. This is Brian Hagan with HealthySteps.

To get more HealthySteps tips, register below!

When people ask me how can massage help me or does massage really improve sport performance. I tell them to imagine wearing the tightest clothes they could possible put on and go to work, run around the block, play a sport or work around the house. how do you think your body would feel at the end of the day? That’s what your muscles feel like. What the chances that you would end up tearing your breeches or shirt during the day? Watch this video to get a better idea of why your muscle are like tight clothes.